It SNOWED in Salina UT!

IT SNOWED!!! It finally snowed here in Salina and I’m happy. I’ve never been so excited to see snow before, because with snow comes the cold, and I don’t like the cold. That doesn’t matter now that I’m out here, because it’s not as cold here as it gets in Minnesota.With that out of the way, on to more “mission” based things.My companion is from Hawaii as I said in an earlier “letter”…blog…email…thing… This is only his second time in a snowy winter season and he’s pretty cold. He has his big jacket on while I only have a sweater on at the moment. To be honest, I don’t actually need the sweater. I just wear it so people think I’m not crazy.

Here are some of the people that we have on date for baptism:

Brianna Carroll is getting baptized this week.
Lucas & Hunter McCoy and Isaiah Smith are getting baptized on the 24th of Nov
Troy Sorrano is on date for the 8th of Dec
Ileen Bangert, Clarrissa Sifford, Taylen Johnson, and Kyle Ortwine are on date for the 15th of Dec
Daison Christensen is on date for the 22nd of Dec

-Brianna is a shy girl about 9 years old and we’ve been working with her for about 9 weeks now and she’s excited to be baptized.
-Lucas & Hunter McCoy are brothers (11 & 9 respectively) and they’re super excited for baptism. They came to church yesterday with their entire family!
-Troy Sorrano has been worked on for a couple years now and he has finally accepted the invitation to be baptized!
-Ileen Bangert is a hyper 10 year old girl that has two hyper 8 year old brothers. It’s hard to teach them, but she’s happy to meet with missionaries again.
-Clarrissa Sifford has been reading the Book of Mormon for over 2 months and has decided that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church and she has a desire to be baptized! 😀
-Taylen Johnson is a 9 year old girl that wants to be baptized, but it’s hard to meet with her because some of her family members are sick and they’re out of the home a lot.
-Kyle Ortwine has been taking seminary for the past couple years and has found a desire to be baptized. The seminary teacher here is our High Councilman over missionary work in the stake and he’s a great man and a wonderful teacher!
-Daison Christensen is a 10 year old boy that has had a hard time with choosing the right and he has a desire to change and to improve his life. The Gospel of Jesus Christ can do just that! 😉

We have a lot of potential people here in the Salina Stake and we will be finding them this week and hopefully putting them on date so that they can experience the blessings that come from this Gospel and from our Father in Heaven.

One of the potential people here works in the Family History Center and is doing a great job at indexing and genealogy. Another is a daughter of one of our investigators. One is a girl that we asked to be baptized on the door step and she said yes!

There is a lot of work to be done here in Salina and we are donig our best to find those prepared by the Lord to accept our message.

The Gospel is all about families and how they can be together forever. The most important social unit in the world is the family. That where we learn the most, where we feel love, peace, and joy, and that’s also where we are taught the right ways of the world. Once the family unit is established and the commandments of the Lord are taught, we can become like the 2000 Stripling Warriors in the Book of Mormon:

“But behold, it came to pass they had many sons, who had not entered into a covenant that they would not take their weapons of war to defend themselves against their enemies; therefore they did assemble themselves together at this time, as many as were able to take up arms, and they called themselves Nephites.

And they entered into a covenant to fight for the liberty of the Nephites, yea, to protect the land unto the laying down of their lives; yea, even they covenanted that they never would give up their liberty, but they would fight in all cases to protect the Nephites and themselves from bondage.

Now behold, there were two thousand of those young men, who entered into this covenant and took their weapons of war to defend their country.

And now behold, as they never had hitherto been a disadvantage to the Nephites, they became now at this period of time also a great support; for they took their weapons of war, and they would that Helaman should be their leader.

And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all—they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted.Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him.”

“Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them.

And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: ‘We do not doubt our mothers knew it.'”